


The Terrorist

by mechadogmarron



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: (I guess technically all Zero Escape fanfiction is canon compliant if you think about it though...), Canon-Compliant, Canon-Typical Terrorism, Gen, Post-Canon, Zero Escape Secret Santa 2019, shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25262917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechadogmarron/pseuds/mechadogmarron
Summary: After Delta's death, Crash Keys reconvenes with a new mission: find the terrorist who threatens to end everything.
Kudos: 12





	The Terrorist

“Aum Shinrikyo?” 

“Hm.” Akane added the group to the growing list of organizations that might feasibly have a religious terrorist, writing as small as she could to leave room for even more names. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere this way.”

“Without even knowing a nation, it’ll be difficult to narrow it down.” Phi tapped her foot, thoughtful. She and Sigma had signed on to help Crash Keys, with the understanding that as soon as this terrorism business was done, they were _out_ , thank you very much. 

“He mentioned it was a nuclear attack, right?” Sigma said. “Most countries don’t have nukes. You can cut off a good chunk of these. Should be workable.”

“Doesn’t matter, if they can provoke a nation with nukes to use them. Or attack a nuclear power plant. Once the bombs start flying...” Phi shrugged. Her friend — coworker? _father_? — could be an absolute goddamn buffoon, but that went without saying.

“Phi’s right. Speaking of which — Sigma, Phi, did you have any luck using Sean to access Delta’s quantum computer functions?” 

“Wouldn’t’ve here listing terrorist groups if we had. Whatever protection he’s got on that thing, it’s way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible without an advanced quantum computer of our own — there are forms of encryption and protection they can solve in an instant that conventional machines will never solve.”

“Takes one to break one, huh? And I assume there’s nothing on the market like that...” Akane sighed. 

He shook his head. “His was one of a kind. I can’t imagine how he managed to build it — he must’ve used the teleporter. But we don’t have access to the damn thing, and dead men tell no tales. I’m tempted to try to SHIFT back and see if we can’t save it, but that doesn’t do anything for  _this_ timeline.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I wish I could SHIFT into the timeline where I don’t have to think about SHIFTing.” Junpei rolled his eyes. 

“But if you did, you would still know about SHIFTing, and that you would be here and forced to learn to SHIFT. You would increase the amount of SHIFTing in the metatemporality, if by an infinitely small amount.” Akane smiled, and Phi had to choke back a groan. “Well, not exactly. It’s actually an interesting question — whether you choose to SHIFT or not already splits a timeline, so ultimately, all it does is let you choose which timeline you’d rather inhabit. In essence, that we’ve attempted to do this at all, or ever would, has already created an infinite manifold of quantum possibilities by which—“ Her face suddenly went blank, and she closed her eyes. Weird. Phi glanced over to Junpei to see if it got a rise out of him, but both he and Aoi seemed calm enough.

There was a moment of comfortable silence, and then Akane threw herself across the room, eyes snapped open. “Everyone, up and out!”

“What’s up?” Junpei asked, not waiting for an answer to rush to her side. Didn’t need to tell Phi twice, either.

“There’s a bomb in the building.” 

“Any chance of disarming it?” Phi’d bothered to read up after the A-B; she and Sigma had decent chances versus anything conventional. But if two death games had taught her anything, it was just how ridiculously unconventional you could get. 

“The Aoi who told me didn’t know anything about it. Roof collapse.”

“Got it.” Aoi pulled the fire alarm as they scattered, though God willing no one else should’ve been in the warehouse they’d been meeting up in. 

It was a huge building, but all of them knew how to get the hell  _out_ of a place, in more ways than one. It was familiar: against the ground,  _go, go, go!;_ every eye and ear alert for the first second’s notice that it was time to SHIFT, bodies equally primed for the feeling of someone SHIFTing into  _them_ , as so often happened in times of disaster. But the door was in sight. Akane first, than Aoi and Junpei; finally, Phi, and then—

Sigma was halfway out the door when they heard the catastrophic  _boom_ , followed by screeching beams as the building suddenly weakened from the loss of support and the heat and fire. He froze, and without thinking, Phi grabbed him and pulled him the rest of the way.

“It’s not safe here,” Akane said. “Whoever did that, we don’t know if they’re still around. And none of us want to deal with cops. Aoi, send a message to all the other Receivers and let them know someone’s after Crash Keys — bet SOIS is another target. Phi, you’re driving.”

“Got it.” The five of them piled into the heavy truck, wheels spinning before the last door was even closed. 

Whatever their enemy was, they’d noticed Crash Keys. Now, the game was on. 

###

“So you can Receive messages even from other timelines?”

Akane nodded. “Not consistently, but Junpei’s been able to cross-Send to me before. Aoi only picked it up recently. I think the Decision Game strengthened my ability to Receive. I’m sorry, I figured you two knew.”

“Water under the bridge,” Sigma replied. Phi _wanted_ to tell him to shut up — it was an incredible skill to have, to transfer information without endangering the consciousness — but they had bigger fish to fry. “I assume you’ve been keeping an ear out for any more information?”

She nodded. “But I only ever get snippets, so I don’t think I’ll get anything useful, and so far we all live in a timeline where no one SHIFTed back to warn us.”

“Hm. Well, we know they know about us, and they’ve got a presence in Japan. I’m guessing they could follow us even if we left the country.” Phi pulled a thoughtful expression. “They may not be a known terrorist cell; could even be something recent. Did SOIS know where we were meeting? They could have a rat.”

Akane shook her head. “I don’t share details of our operations with anyone. We have too many enemies, and a group that big, rats aren’t just likely, they’re inevitable.”

“Hm. It’s possible one of us is a rat, but there are an ungodly number of ways to track someone. If someone had their mind against us, figuring out where they were would be trivial.” Junpei shrugged. “Saw a lot of them, the past few years. You wouldn’t believe how many places you can stick a GPS transmitter.” 

Sigma nodded. “We can’t ignore the possibility of a traitor, but we have no evidence towards it and no actionable way to work around it. Either way, our enemies have shown they’re willing to go to lengths against us. We can’t assume we’re safe until this is figured out. They might go after our associates, too... You guys should contact Carlos. Phi, you get ahold of Diana. I’ll talk to Sean.”

“If they have a trace on our phones, that could make the situation worse.” Phi sighed. “We’ll want burners.”

“Already got you covered,” Aoi said. “They’re in the glovebox. Akane, could you pass them around?”

Calls went quick. The critical warnings first, then the usual pleasantries: “keep Eric out of trouble, you know how he gets”; “say hi to Maria for me”; “...love you too, Mom.” As soon as the relevant news had been spread, Akane collected the phones and — checking to make sure they wouldn’t hit anything first — threw them into an odd metal bag.

“It’s shielded to block network communications,” she explained. “I’d love to incinerate them, but we don’t have time for that. We’ll want to stay on the move as much as we can for now. The first question: do you think they know about SHIFTing?”

“If they know about Crash Keys, they almost certainly have _some_ knowledge of psionic potential, but it may be an incomplete understanding. That may be why they went after us when the expected apocalyptic date isn’t for another couple years. If they don’t have a strong understanding of the concept of timelines, they may think it’ll prevent us from using our abilities to send information about their operations backwards. After all, a dead man can’t SHIFT,” Phi said. 

“According to the parallel possibility hypothesis, the less likely it is for us to survive to stop the apocalypse, the fewer timelines will be generated in which it happens. Ultimately, that doesn’t matter in conventional metrics, but it means that fewer timelines exist where we can SHIFT, meaning fewer timelines exist overall where we do... Of course, the objective temporal space hypothesis contradicts this, but a lot of psychospacial researchers believe in the former. It has to do with a contradiction between conventional quantum physics and conventional quantum mathematics — we don’t know which is correct. For what it’s worth, I subscribe to the latter.” 

“So what you’re saying is that they might be in the know about the whole thing?”

She nodded. “They may even have access to a quantum computer, in which case the answer of how they’re keeping eyes on us is trivial. Awareness of the subject is growing rapidly, after all — I suspect that if the world doesn’t end, governments will begin officially acknowledging psychic phenomenon within two decades. It could be associates of Cradle.”

“Damn, I wish Delta would’ve given us more hints. Snail this and snail that, like, shut up, dude!”

“Junpei, that’s it!” Phi was too calm to jump to her feet, and she was buckled in in a moving truck anyways, but damn if she didn’t want to. “Delta’s snail was what connected all of us — what brought us to our lives. But it wasn’t connected to him. It was only because of him that we were born, and he only had us born because of the apocalypse, right?”

“So, he was bullshitting us?” Junpei said.

Phi shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he was giving us a hint that  _he_ was connected to the apocalypse; that completes the circle, because the snail lead to Cradle, which became a prototype for his Free the Soul. If Delta is, in some way, at fault for the apocalypse, the timeline stabilizes around him; his existence creates the circumstances for his existence.” 

“So he needed to create the apocalypse to stop the apocalypse so he could be born? That doesn’t make—“

“I see, I see! Jumpy, you should pay more attention. It’s an example of a bootstrap loop. Essentially, his existence was already a casual loop — as in the bootstrap paradox — so by nature, he was driven to strengthen the connection.”

“Wait, he was connected to Free the Soul, right?” Sigma said. “Phi, do you remember Dio?”

“Unfortunately.”

“He said he was the _fourth_ generation of Left clone, back in 2074. If Delta died in that timeline, the clones would have to be raising themselves, right? So if we assume twenty years between generations, that means the first generation was born 34 years ago. They’re old enough to be wracked with grief over the death of your weird brother-father-figure. Old enough to keep manning his terrorist group, like they did in our timeline. Old enough to plot vengeance. And with Delta, their savior, dead...”

“...they might just decide the world should burn. Bombs are a huge part of their MO, too.” Phi turned to Akane. “Does Crash Keys have any experience with Free the Soul? Only some? Well, let me fill you in...”

###

“Tell me again, why did we bring Carlos?” Aoi gave the man an odd look. 

“The more SHIFTers the better. We might be able to pull you along with this many. Hopefully we won’t need to, but...” Akane shrugged. “Best to be prepared. And he’s a better shot than any of us.”

“Guess no one would hear a gun all the way out here.” The remote compound that they’d found — courtesy a SOIS tip — was miles and miles from civilization, disguised as an abandoned old farm. But they all knew that behind that veneer of nasty old wood lay a sizable cell of Free The Soul adherents. 

“You know, I heard in some countries they’re taking down old barns for the barn wood. It’s considered a hot commodity,” Akane said as they completed their scope of the outer perimeter. No noise, no movement, nothing. Junpei’s aerial drone hadn’t seen anything from above. By all accounts, the place was empty.

“Maybe we should call ‘em here.” Junpei waved them over to a door. With a nod all around and a creak, he opened it.

“Jesus fuck!” Sigma swore.

If not for the dozens of perfectly identical bloody bodies, it would’ve been a fairly typical cult barn (in his limited but surprisingly nonzero experience), but then there were the bodies — each identical copies, a bit older than the Dio he remembered, each coated in blood from their mouths, their ears, their eye sockets. 

“What the hell is this?” Junpei shouted. Akane grabbed him before he could get any closer. “What—“

“Whatever it is, we don’t know that it’s safe. They’ve used diseases before. Did any of you see anything like this during the Decision Game? No? Alright. Mask up, all.”

Although he didn’t get too close, Sigma still took a moment to examine the corpses as best he could. Their clothes were simple and unassuming, not designed for drama and grace in the face of what must’ve been a particularly violent ritual suicide. They didn’t have any obvious wounds; it looked more like it had exploded out of them. Even with the limited viewing angles available, if there had actually been a physical cause, it would’ve had to be visible, unless someone had dressed them all after they’d killed themselves in the nude. 

Which… didn’t seem beyond Free the Soul, but he didn’t exactly have a Hazmat suit on him. It definitely wouldn’t be past Free the Soul to poison their corpses, either. And God knew what the hell these men had for diseases. Radical-6 didn’t come from nowhere, after all. 

“Do you think there’s a reason they did it?”

“Maybe the next batch of clones is ready to take their place?” Carlos said. “I mean, fewer mouths to feed and all that. These guys are old enough to have kids getting ready to take their place.”

“Not a bad guess, but if they’re preparing to end the world, I’d think they’d need all the manpower they can get.”

“Probably not. Radical-6 didn’t take a lot of people. Just took…” Phi trailed off. “You know. It’s how you use it, not what you’ve got. Although I can’t imagine Delta built that facility of his without some help.”

“Another perk to the clones, right? And if he had the ones who knew the details off themselves, they couldn’t rat on him. If he’d… been alive, anyways. Do they know about what happened?”

“Almost certainly. Unless he wanted them to remain in ignorance, anyways. That happens in cults sometimes, you know.” Akane shrugged. “If they know their leader is dead, it humanizes him, and weakens the cause. But I don’t think Free the Soul’s core adherents had anything to worry about with that. A clone raised in the cult is different from a regular person who joins looking for some kind of meaningful contact and applicable philosophy. Junpei, do you still have your scanner devices?”

Junpei nodded. “Do you want me to scope the place out?”

“Yeah. If this was the cell location, and not just a spot for a mass suicide, they’ve got to have some kind of living quarters.”

“Good point.” He deployed a weird little metal device he pulled from his bag, which skittered across the ground, edges rolling in circles. Soon, it stopped in place over what looked like plain dirt. “There’s something about six inches below.”

“They did a good job on covering it up. Good find.” With six people, it took no time at all to clear the space, revealing a clean metal hatch, out of place in the rustic, rotted space. It had some sort of baffling sliding puzzle lock that wouldn’t really serve to keep anyone out, just inconvienence them — one that Phi popped in a blink of an eye — and then they were looking at a deep tunnel down into darkness. 

“Headlamps on. I’ll lead. You next, Jumpy. Then Carlos, Aoi, Phi, Sigma.”

“Got it.” Her tone brokered no argument. 

The space beneath them was unlit, a basement of smooth concrete walls. Each door was unmarked, the inhabitants presumably well aware of the contents; opening them revealed the standard sort of things one might expect in a barracks — six simple dorms fitting four each, bathrooms with communal showers, a small reading room with only Free the Soul approved texts; largely, known scriptures, with a smattering of what must’ve been Delta’s own work.

“We’ll come back for them. Living targets first. Books aren’t going to disappear.”

“Got it.”

There were no clone tanks, no technology for producing more Lefts, which suggested that this wasn’t their main facility. But the room at the end of the singular hallway gave off an  _aura_ of something’s-in-here — despite being identical to the rest.

Akane signaled Carlos, and he readied his weapon. Then, with a flourish, she pulled the door open.

Behind the door was a familiar man — familiar in his blonde hair, in his graceful features, in his sense of dress, but not in the way he held himself. 

The next generation of Lefts? But he seemed different, somehow. 

“So you found us here,” the man said, and turned to meet Akane’s eyes. “My name is Left.”

“You’re planning a terrorist attack.”

“Yes. You saw the bodies upstairs, right?”

She nodded. “Killing your own brothers in cold blood.”

“Not exactly. They’re not really mine. You see, I arrived in this timeline eight months ago — the same day my brother died.” His face broke into a sad smile. “I used the teleporter, of course. I’m incapable of SHIFTing.” 

“You’re the original Left, aren’t you?” Phi watched him, eyes sharp — tense and ready to respond to even the slightest indication of trouble.

He nodded. “Eight months ago, when I was fifteen, a man brought me to the teleporter and took me forward to this day. He said I might be able to meet with my brother. But I found out almost immediately that Delta had been killed. And there’s no way I can set the transporter to ensure I’ll be teleported into a timeline with him.”

“So you took control of Free the Soul?”

He nodded. “Delta had contingencies, plans. My clones listened to me, and I studied my brother’s research. Eventually, I developed a plan — one he himself must’ve seen me learn through his quantum computer.”

“A plan to destroy the world that took you from him?”

“If it comes to that. Destroying all of human life isn’t difficult, really. It’s hard to destroy it selectively, to keep a few alive. But to just decimate, with no care in the world? Trivial. My brother developed a virus for his Decision Game, one called Fanatic Bio R. You wouldn’t have seen it; it was in a game for the non-SHIFTers. But it’s completely fatal. And I’ve modified a version to be more contagious.”

“So you’ll release it on the world and — what? Even if it’s contagious, there’s no way it could spread to everyone,” Phi said.

“No, it can’t. But that’s the beauty of it — it doesn’t have to. It’ll be obvious to any scientist that studies it that it’s completely artificial. Once the governments know, the fear starts. The wars start. The bombs start. Mankind’s governments have all the power they need to end all human life — they just need a bit of a push.”

“So you’re the terrorist he warned us about.” Akane’s voice was steady. 

“Yes. But don’t worry — if you do what we say, no one will get hurt.”

“Why would we listen to you, you sick bastard?”

“Didn’t I just explain why? If I’m killed, my contingencies go off. The plan doesn’t need me breathing; it’s not like I’d survive anyways. And no one has to die for my plan. You’ll even get to save a life. All you have to do is SHIFT back to before you killed my brother, and let him live — and with so many of you, it shouldn’t be a problem to take me with you.” 

“You don’t have a body there.”

“ _I_ don’t have a body, no. But I have clones. It’s the same idea — I’ll be able to SHIFT into one of them. After all, if there was a transporter copy of you in the same timeline as an original self, you could SHIFT into either. It’s the same concept. And there’s none of the ethical issues with SHIFTing someone into an unpleasant timeline — I’ve made arrangements to be sure that the plan won’t fire once I’m gone. They’ll simply move eight months forward to find that they’ve been spared the work of finding the terrorist. If anything, they’ve got the lucky end of the stick.”

“How do we know you and Delta won’t go killing people in the new timeline?”

“Why would we? From what I remember, before the me left in the old timeline died, he was a normal man. For all his posturing, he only wanted to be with family. Two of you started Nonary Games, didn’t you? You’re not so different. I saw the results of his Decision Game. I saw how many people your mother killed for you in that timeline, Phi.”

Phi opened her mouth to respond, but Akane cut her off. “Let us talk about it. We’ll give you your answer in... fifteen minutes, let’s say.”

“Of course. I don’t have any way of monitoring the facility, and all of the doors here are soundproof. You can speak wherever you’d like.”

As soon as they were out of earshot, Junpei nearly exploded. “Did you hear that bastard? Playing with our lives like that? And—“

“Just a moment. Aoi, I need you to leave. Start making arrangements to stop his Fanatic Bio R plan, just in case. If we do SHIFT, our chances of pulling him are better if you’re not there.”

“Got it. Stay safe. I couldn’t bear to live without you.”

“Plenty of you already are, you know. But don’t worry — an Akane will come home for you. As for everyone else, is anyone definitely in support?”

Carlos nodded. “I—“

“Arguments later. Anyone definitely against?”

Junpei nodded. “That crazy asshole—“

“Arguments later. Phi, Sigma, you’re on the fence?”

“There’s a timeline where we do it and a timeline where we don’t. Each of those has a timeline where it was the right choice and a timeline where it was the wrong choice. It’s hard to say which one is which.” Phi sighed. “I texted Mira, and she confirmed Fanatic Bio R was in the game. Apparently she and the others injected themselves with Radical-6 to stop it from killing them.”

“Hence releasing Radical-6 to stop the terrorist — Left’s plans would’ve been useless in that timeline. Even if he survived, the disease would’ve done nothing, and even if it had, the governments would’ve collapsed before they could go to war.” Sigma nodded along as he spoke. “It makes sense.”

“Exactly. So the weapon exists, and there’s no reason to assume he wouldn’t use it. But whether a fifteen year old could establish a global network in a span of months to effectively modify and spread a dangerous disease the moment he was stopped, well, that’s more questionable.”

“So it could go either way.”

“Yeah. And that’s assuming his plan worked. There’s a good chance Fanatic Bio R kills everyone wherever he sets it off and dies without spreading. It gets blamed on chemical weapons, maybe, some terrorist group or controversial government takes the fall, and we all move on. I’d say it’s a roughly 30% chance it’s really bad, and maybe a 5% chance it’s apocalyptic.”

“Those are pretty good odds, though, right?” Junpei said. “Carlos, you should just shoot him.”

“They’re not as good as they look. A 5% chance of the apocalypse is huge. What matters is the chance of things going wrong if he’s reunited with Delta. I’m guessing it’s probably comparable.”

“I see. Then why don’t we do both?” Akane said. “Flip a coin on it — that’ll make a good point to split the timeline, so one of us can come back if we’re wrong. Then, if it’s heads, we SHIFT with him — unless someone SHIFTs back first and tells us not to — and tails, we kill him, again, unless someone SHIFTs back. That moves the odds in our favor as much as it can.”

“That’s a pretty good plan. And it works for you two, too. If Carlos is right, when we pull up tails he’ll SHIFT back and stop us. If Junpei is right, when we get heads he’ll SHIFT back. At worst, only one of us is stuck in a bad timeline, and the chance of that is pretty low.” Sigma shrugged. “Any of you have a coin?”

Akane smiled, pulling one from her pocket. “If any of you want out, it’s your last chance to climb that ladder. Goes for you too, Junpei, Carlos. You don’t have to be party to it.” 

“I’m not leaving your side,” Junpei replied, and she tossed the coin in the air.

Somewhere in a Nevada desert, a gun didn’t fire.

Somewhere under a barn in western Iowa, one did. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for ZE Secret Santa 2019, but I forgot to post it to AO3 until now. It's on the secret Santa tumblr page, though! 
> 
> I found it while going through my drafts and thought - hey, maybe some people would like to read it. Let me know what you think!


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